Data centers are generally centralized facilities that provide Internet and intranet services needed to support businesses and organizations. A typical data center can house various types of electronic equipment, such as computers, servers (e.g., email servers, proxy servers, and DNS servers), switches, routers, data storage devices, and other associated components. In addition, data centers typically deploy network security components, such as firewalls, VPN (virtual private network) gateways, and intrusion detection systems.
In traditional networking, routers and switch devices usually refer to a MAC (Media Access Control) address, to a VLAN (Virtual Local Area Network) identifier, or to zoning information within a given packet to forward that packet. This packet-forwarding behavior limits addressing to one other system, namely, the next hop in the path toward the packet's destination. In the data center environment, such packet-forwarding behavior can affect performance. In addition, some resources of the data center can become bottlenecks in the processing of the packet traffic. The packet-forwarding behavior may then aggravate the undesirable condition.